sociology Essays - Religion And Science, Philosophy Of Science

Merton?s dissertation was finished in 1936. A revised version appeared in 1938 as a monograph in Sarton?s series, Osiris, with the new title, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England. Later it was published in book form, with many foreign-language translations to follow. Against the prevailing view that religion and science were antithetical, Merton demonstrated the influence of Puritanism on the growth of seventeenth-century science in England, a finding that was at the core of the ?Merton thesis,? as it became known in academic parlance. Complementary to Max Weber?s thesis about the origins of the capitalist spirit in Puritanism, Merton?s work was to become a foundation for the rise of the sociology of science in America. It spawned a flood of commentary, of which the best collection is Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science: The Merton Thesis, edited by I. B. Cohen (1990). The fate of this work also exemplifies another theme that interested Merton?the preemption of scientific and scholarly attention. Thus, while the ?Merton thesis? received almost all the attention of the commentators, other parts of the book were neglected, even though they, too, were substantial contributions to the sociology of science, such as detailing the influence of economic and military needs on scientific problem choice in seventeenth-century England.